A Bitcoin Reality Check with Sergej Kotliar - WBD637

Sergej Kotliar is the founder and CEO of Bitrefill. In this
interview, we discuss enabling Bitcoin circular economies, the
mission of Bitrefill to be a financial empowerment company, the
risks and rewards of using zero-confs for processing
transactions, and the many different cultures and communities
Bitcoin has spawned.


- - - -


Bitrefill is the largest crypto e-commerce platform in the world.
It aims to facilitate the development of crypto circular
economies. Whilst Bitcoin makes up a significant portion of their
business, they are not a Bitcoin-only company. The mission is
aimed at empowering people to undertake transactions on the
internet that would otherwise not be possible for them. To that
end, they pragmatically enable the use of Bitcoin, stablecoins,
and a limited number of altcoins.


The argument in favour of their strategy is compelling. Not
everyone will respond to ideological arguments in favour of
Bitcoin. Whilst there are many who will get drawn in by Bitcoin’s
compelling theoretical roots, there are many others who are more
concerned with prosaic day-to-day concerns. To maximise efforts
to increase adoption we, therefore, need to appeal to a range of
visions for Bitcoin. One important vision is focused on Bitcoin’s
dry technical utilities.


In our discussion, Sergej refers to the increase in the use of
the internet and other technologies such as VPN. The widespread
growth in the use of such technologies occurs as a result of a
practical benefit being provided to users, not because adopters
are seeking to mitigate a certain political or ethical concern.
That’s not to say that selling Bitcoin as freedom money isn’t
critical. Rather, we need to augment it with other strategies.